A First Draft of History: ‘Inside the Cave’ Details Obama’s 2012 Digital Campaign

DC’s political class may be preoccupied with Boehner’s “Plan B” disaster, the fiscal cliff and the (now-overdue) Mayan Apocalypse, but some folks are focused on a longer game. Among them Patrick Ruffini and his crew at EngageDC, who’ve put together an excellent slideshow/overview of Obama’s 2012 digital campaign, including organization charts, metrics, tools, tactics and a look at staffing. It’s less of a narrative than a spotlighting of highlights, and like any document produced by people outside the campaign, we should imbibe its specifics with at least a few grains of salt as a chaser.

But it’s a great collection of resources and observations, and Patrick clearly hopes his Republican colleagues read it and begin to realize just how dramatically Romney was outclassed online. BTW, I’ll be mining it heavily for the expansion of “Learning from Obama,” which I hope will be out in the next two or three months. Download your own PDF copy of “Inside the Cave” here.